Tony Baker and his daughter Mesa take away a Christmas tree from Rum River Tree Farm in Anoka, Minn., Dec. 8.

VATICAN CITY (CNS)—If silence is not one of the sounds associated
with Christmas preparations, chances are people will miss an experience
of the love and tenderness that is at the heart of the holiday, Pope
Francis said.

Celebrating Mass Dec. 12 in the chapel of his residence, Pope Francis
offered a reflection on the tone of voice and the endearments God uses
to speak to people and communicate his love.

It's not so much what God says as how he says it, the pope said in his homily.

"When a child has a bad dream and wakes up crying," he said, "Dad goes and says, 'Don't be afraid, don't be scared. I'm here.'

"The Lord speaks this way, too," he said, pointing to the day's reading
from Isaiah 41, in which the Lord reassures Jacob, affectionately
calling him a little worm.

"When we watch a dad or mom talking to a child, we see how they become
small, using the voice of a child and the gestures of a child," he said.
"From the outside one can think, 'Oh, how ridiculous.' They make
themselves smaller, don't they? That's because a father's or mother's
love needs to be close. I'd say this: They need to crouch down to enter
the world of the child."

Pope Francis said it is obvious that parents don't have to talk baby
talk to their children to be understood, but sometimes it helps if they
"make themselves children. The Lord is like that, too.

"And so, the father and the mother say ridiculous things to the child,
like, 'Ah, my love, my toy,'" the pope said. "The Lord says these
things, too: 'You worm, Jacob,' 'You are like a worm to me, a tiny
little thing, but I love you so much.'"

The language of the Lord is the language of love and tenderness, of whispers and extreme simplicity, he said.

When the Lord spoke to Elijah, the pope said, it was not in the roar of
the wind or the rumble of an earthquake, but in "the sound of that
silence that is proper to love" and "doesn't make a spectacle."

"This is the music of the Lord's language and, as we prepare for
Christmas, we must listen for it. It will do us good to hear it," Pope
Francis said.

"Usually, Christmas seems like a very noisy feast," he said, but "we can
use a bit of silence to hear these words of love, closeness and
tenderness."